Justice Freeman And Ford Heights 4: Lesson In Disdain

On that day, the state high court released an opinion written by Justice Freeman that upheld the conviction and death sentence of Dennis Williams. He had twice been found guilty in Cook County of a ghastly double murder, and one of the points his lawyers had raised on appeal was that neither police investigators nor Williams' trial attorney had adequately pursued a tip that another man, Dennis Johnson, and three other cohorts, had committed the crime.

"If any assumptions are to be made, it seems more reasonable to assume that such a lead was investigated," Freeman wrote. He also wrote, "Any continued investigation to procure Dennis Johnson, an alleged witness to the crimes, would certainly prove fruitless."

To pursue fruit metaphors, the latter sentence was a road apple. Johnson was a real witness and more. Evidence now shows--and prosecutors agree--that Johnson, who has since died, was the leader of a gang that abducted Larry Lionberg and Carol Schmal in May 1978, took them to an abandoned townhouse in what is now Ford Heights, repeatedly raped Schmal and shot them both to death.

Dennis Williams had nothing to do with it. He and three other innocent men--dubbed the Ford Heights Four--were exonerated and released from prison last year after DNA tests pointed the finger elsewhere and the three surviving perpetrators confessed.

But in 1991, Justice Freeman, with a dollop of the sort of imperious disdain that can make one look truly foolish later on, dismissed an avenue of inquiry that would ultimately lead to the truth--one that had been ignored by investigators. He set Jan 28, 1992, for Williams' execution.

Two mitigating factors: One, Freeman was writing for an undivided court and so was only giving voice to a collective myopia. Two, he is capable of better judgment. In December 1992, when the court's buffoon laureate Justice James Heiple wrote a factually impaired opinion for the 4-3 majority that wanted to uphold the death sentence of Rolando Cruz, Freeman wrote one of two muscular dissents and noted the "strikingly dramatic . . . corroborative force" of the confession of another man, a man DNA evidence later proved had committed the crime.

Still, Freeman's folly in the Williams opinion serves as a salutary reminder of how wrong--dead wrong--a high court can be. Tuesday will give us an extra reminder of that as the first of the men actually responsible for the murder--Juan Rodriguez, a recently convicted accomplice of Dennis Johnson--is sentenced to a mandatory minimum of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Humility is appropriate for judges entrusted with life and death decisions.

Shame, meanwhile, is appropriate not only for those who railroaded the Ford Heights Four, but also for officials who appear to be biding time and hoping that the public comes to see this as an immaculate miscarriage of justice for which no one is responsible.

I brought this up five months ago, but will do so again: A key witness against the four innocent men coughed up a story for the grand jury that she saw them commit the crime. She accurately described the positions of the bodies and the wounds that had been inflicted, even though we now know she was not present and had no way of knowing such things.

Who fed her this information? This is perhaps the starkest of a number of questions that need answers now, especially since three of the main investigators whose integrity is at issue remain on active duty with the Cook County sheriff's police.

A sheriff's spokesman said an internal review turned up no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of investigators and the department is now deferring to State's Atty. Dick Devine's office.

A spokesman for Devine said the office is conducting an investigation, but would not comment on its progress.

That was the answer I got five months ago, and my suggestion stands: Bring in a special prosecutor. There is low-hanging fruit here, and major book and movie projects about the case stand to pick it first and embarrass more than just a judge who assumed too much and saw too little.

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Read up on the Ford Heights Four case at (www.chicago.tribune.com/zorn/).